Casino boss
James Packer
has announced the design for his company
Crown’s
proposed Barangaroo development in what architects and planners say is a bid to divert debate away from the fundamental question of whether there should be a casino on the Sydney site at all.

Crown Resorts on Thursday said it had chosen the design of UK-based firm Wilkinson Eyre Architects over US rivals Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill and Kohn Pedersen Fox for the structure it wants to build at the former Darling Harbour dock site, which will contain 350-room hotel and invitation-only gambling facilities.

“When completed, Crown Sydney will be instantly recognisable around the world," Packer said. “Its iconic curves and fine lines celebrate the harbour and create an architectural ‘postcard’ that will help attract international tourists and assist Sydney to compete with other global destinations."

Crown’s Barangaroo project – for which it must get permission to increase the height from the 170 metres approved for a hotel on the site to about 235 metres – is still subject to approval. However, the highly stage-managed announcement, less than two weeks after Crown announced the three final designs up for assessment, is part of a process to make the development appear a fait accompli and divert attention from the question of whether it should be built at all, some critics say.

“It’s a kind of bait and switch, a tactic to divert attention," says Lee Stickells, a lecturer in architecture and urban design at Sydney University. “Energy is put into arguing the merit of different designs, or whether there should have been an Australian firm invited to tender. The casino starts to be seen as a foregone conclusion. We should still be asking: Is a casino even appropriate there?"

Sydney’s planning processes have long failed to keep up with the growing city’s needs and this has affected the way people have responded to Barangaroo, says Amelia Thorpe, who teaches and researches planning law at the University of NSW.

“There’s been a long history of Sydney catching up and not getting its strategic plans right," Thorpe says. “And then, with opportunities like Barangaroo, reacting."

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A narrow definition of consultation that has not allowed a range of people to comment early on a project has also meant community participation on projects is often reduced to an unnecessarily adversarial X-vs-Y process that doesn’t allow for better or more creative planning outcomes, she says.

“When you have a valuable piece of land, it becomes a discussion of ‘Is it going to become a casino or is it going to be a park?’" Thorpe says. “These narrow one-for-one tradeoffs are a problem."

The
Australian Institute of Architects
has already criticised Crown’s plans for going against the natural character of the area.

“What will be the impact of such a monumental building on the low-scale and people-friendly community facilities proposed for the harbour side of Barangaroo Central?"
Joe Agius
, the institute’s NSW chapter president, says.

“Rather than protecting the public interest, successive governments have allowed private interests to gain primacy in determining the re-configuration of this major site. This is occurring again: encroachment on areas previously public, renegotiation of heights, questionable uses, disregard for previous masterplans, no public consultation and proposals so unconscious of their context they may as well be in Dubai."

Crown’s Sydney hotel resort project – which the company says could cost up to $1.5 billion – pits the company squarely against the incumbent Sydney gaming licensee Echo, which operates the existing Star casino across the water from Barangaroo in Pyrmont.

Meanwhile, Echo chief executive John Redmond has taken the fight to billionaire James Packer’s company. He has made his own unsolicited proposal to the state government’s assessment panel to extend Echo’s exclusive licence beyond the current expiry date of 2019, in exchange for making significant investment in expanding the four hectare Star facility.